That Syrian skirmish I AARed a few weeks ago is now available to all and sundry as part of the recently unleashed CMSF: British Forces demo. If you are either all or sundry, and thought my tank tactics timid, my employment of artillery artless, and my use of infantry infuriatingly infrugal, now is your chance to do better. Grind out glorious low-cost victories, then strut and brag via the comments section.

I don’t know i can even invest the time in this game (as i did the money) until i have some assurances the ai isn’t broken. I can go play 15 year old rts where the ai is reliable and predictable and takes a load of your micromanagement. This game lacks this. Should i care?

I decided not to by CMSF after I read the Tom vs. Bruce article on it. Even Bruce, who is a hardcore CM player, said that “the standard order patterns that are engraved onto my brain from past CM games no longer work because the AI is so terribly bad”.

CMSF is hands down the best tactical wargame out there. the attention to detail is fantastic as is the simulation itself. All this bickering about AI may have been relevant 2 years ago, but not anymore. I’ll admit I find the setting, modern, assymmetric warfare, desert, un-inspiring (boring even:-)), but I think the new CM engine will truly shine with the upcoming CM:Normandy game. THAT will be my 2009 game of the year :-)

Yes, the AI has come a very, very, very long way. Seriously, these guys have come out with… 13? 14? major patches since release. All of which added hundreds of features, improvements, and fixes. Especially if you’ve already bought the game, you should take the time to download the latest patch and see if you’ll like it instead of relying on years-old impressions.

I did only slightly better than you (although with greater vehicle casualties it’s open to interpretation). I swear that for the first bit the map feels impossible, giant open killing field, enemies with lots of AT and only a few troops at that point.

It took both intersection points out by driving a Challenger II down into them. I’d had RPGs bouncing off me the whole way (the 4 T-72s had been taken out quickly beforehand), but I thought I would take a short cut through town, something killed my tank right next to the coffee shop, (probably an RPG from the coffee shop roof), the crew got out but where gunned down. So I launched a mechanised assault on the Police station and then drove down to take back my crew men with a couple of squads and another challenger. Previous resistance had been shelled into oblivion by danger-close artillary (which sadly killed the wounded tank commander). But I treated the wounded and recovered the dead everywhere I could find them (put you units next to a wounded/dead friendly and leave them and they’ll treat and retrieve the person. Well, there where 2 men missing, but I suspect they died when a AT round hit a land rover pulling a Jackal crew from an arty bombardment, killing both the rescuers and rescuees.